For many years, community financial institutions have been denied fair and equal access to the secondary market. Banks prosper by making prudent loans with an adequate return and maintaining a reasonable cost structure. Today 97 percent of our banks are community banks and they are increasingly finding this business model under siege.

History has shown--and simple economics would anticipate--that a government subsidy for a freely prepayable 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is not good policy.

Ending Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is on the top of the GOP's congressional agenda. However, one Republican want to replace them with another government housing program.

Paul Ryan and Ron Wyden have defined the policy parameters that could be the basis for real Medicare reform in 2013.

There is a way to fix the Medicare program without raising taxes: use market-like arrangements to set prices for both the traditional fee-for-service (FFS) program and for private Medicare Advantage (MA) plans. A fully implemented competitive pricing system for Medicare would save $550 billion over 10 years.

Three years into the nationalization of housing finance by government-sponsored entities Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Housing Authority, it is time to start reducing their footprints. 

The US housing finance market should function without any direct government financial support. It should also ensure mortgage quality, a stable budget for assistance to low-income families, and eliminate Fannie and Freddie.

Medicare is a social insurance program that has the unfortunate characteristics to be expected from any centrally controlled provision of services. We do indeed have a system-wide problem, but if we expect to solve it we have to start with Medicare.